


That Ugly Past

by Exit75



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies), Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)
Genre: Childhood, Crack Crossover, Crossover, M/M, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Trans Character, Trans Newton Geiszler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 05:18:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15478497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Exit75/pseuds/Exit75
Summary: "[...] how fast it had come, out of the darkness between neurons, that ugly past he had to remind himself no longer existed anywhere except some unfortunate brain cells and a couple of photo albums in New Jersey."Basically a brief elaboration on the idea that Dawn Wiener of Welcome to the Dollhouse was trans and grew up to be Newt Geiszler.





	That Ugly Past

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the Dollhouse threw me into a nihilistic wasteland that I could only get out of by writing a way out for Dawn. And the best thing I could think of was that she grew up to be renowned Kaiju expert Dr. Newton Geiszler. I know it's a crazy obscure crossover, so if anyone is actually here for this headcannon I wanna hear from you.

“Like the name?” said Hannibal Chau. “I took it from my favourite historical character and my second favourite Szechuan restaurant in Brooklyn.”  
Funny, thought Newt, and stumbled back without wanting to, milliseconds opening up into hours by lamplight, with a big textbook, late night, his bedroom, senior year, studying for the physics test the next morning, Newton’s laws of motion. He wouldn’t come up with ‘Geiszler’ until the following year, another scientist, mentioned in an ecology paper, ‘Geiszler et. al.’.  
The curtain fell abruptly and he was back, winded, almost, by how far he’d travelled, how fast it had come, out of the darkness between neurons, that ugly past he had to remind himself no longer existed anywhere except some unfortunate brain cells and a couple of photo albums in New Jersey.

He didn’t think about it again until his glasses were knocked off in the commotion, down on the wet concrete he was in the middle school corridor again, tripped over nothing, blind, gecko hands out groping for round-frame thick-lense embarrassment. Now wasn’t the time to explore adolescent trauma, he told himself as flame-blue tentacles probed the air centimeters in front of his nose, but he was twelve years old again. The glowing proboscis reached back through dimensions, twisting into the stale aether of a child’s bedroom where God was being invoked while a far less Christian shrine sat in the corner, dedicated to a far less impressive god, known as Steve. How soon the wish for love would come true, in a monkey’s paw kind of way, his first boyfriend, sort of, rotting in an early grave for ten years now, memories of kisses in the backyard clubhouse, before it was torn down, looking at the moon through the hole in the roof, memories buried in two skulls, one of them empty now, the other full of grey matter and attached to a shaking body standing under a 200-foot monstrosity from a parallel universe, about to be crushed, or eaten, or… nothing? The tentacles retreated, taking the memories with them, like a sinking ship dragging swimmers down in its wake, pulled back down and shut away in that tomb he couldn’t seem to stop desecrating.

Later that night, when his memories were funneled lightspeed into Hermann’s brain, and vice versa, he wondered what Hermann would think. He wasn’t afraid; after all, seeing the world of the kaiju made everything seem miniscule in comparison. It was just that Hermann’s childhood was exactly how he thought it would be, a little nerd in a sweater vest, hiding in his room doing maths homework, no real surprises there. How would Hermann react when he saw a little girl sawing the head off her sister’s doll? If he was shocked, he didn’t mention it. But they had a breach to close, and seven billion people to save.

“So, uh, Herms, I’ve been meaning to ask you…”  
It was nearly a week after everything had transpired. He’d invited Hermann to get dinner with him, trying to be as casual as possible while at the same time firing out telepathic “I love you” missiles he hoped would bypass the need to actually talk about his feelings.  
Hermann looked up, stuffing a dumpling into his mouth and chewing.  
He had to say it now.  
“When you were, well, y’know, when we drifted with the kaiju back there…”  
Hermann raised his eyebrows, still chewing.  
“Well, what I’m trying to say is, uh, I know you might not have been expecting, uh, I mean —”  
Hermann swallowed and cleared his throat. And then in a gesture that killed Newt’s already-struggling sentence in one fell swoop, he reached across the table and put his hand on top of Newt’s.  
“Newton, please.”  
He didn’t have to say anything more.  
Newt felt a smile tug at his face, and Hermann smiled back, smiled the way he’d smiled back there, beside the kaiju carcass, when he’d agreed that he had no choice but to do “what the Jaeger pilots do - share the neural load”.  
Dew drops formed at the corners of Newt’s eyes, threatening to spill over.  
Hermann’s hand felt warm against his own. And New Jersey was very, very far away.


End file.
